Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Meditate If You Have No Time to Meditate | Jake Eagle and Michael Amster (Co-Interviewed by Dan’s Wife, Bianca!)

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

The great meditation teacher Sebene Selassie said this about today’s guests: “I think their work is going to revolutionize mindfulness.” The guests in question are Jake Eagle, a licensed mental health counselor, and Dr. Michael Amster, a physician with a specialty in pain management who is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. Together, they’re out with a new book called The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day. In it, they lay out a simple technique for “microdosing mindfulness” that just about anybody can work into their daily lives.Plus: Dan’s wife, Bianca, joins Dan as co-interviewer.In this episode we talk about:How Jake and Michael stumbled upon this method (the story involves pancakes)Why Bianca has had trouble booting up a meditation habit (and why Jake says he’s “a terrible meditator”)Why people who have trouble sitting daily for extended periods might find that these microdoses are easier to work into their dayHow to do the A.W.E. MethodThe similarities and differences between A.W.E. and traditional mindfulness meditationPractical tips for trying out A.W.E. in everyday life, given how hard it is to form habitsThe early scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of the A.W.E. MethodAnd, finally, whether Bianca and Dan were convinced to try the method!For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/themightyfix.com/happierFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/eagle-amster-630See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, many of you will have heard me say this before, but this is, I think, one of those things that genuinely bears frequent repeating. The process of making and or breaking habits can be diabolically hard, and this is not your fault. If you struggle with behavior change, you are not somehow uniquely dysfunctional. The fact is evolution simply did not wire us for the easy adoption of healthy habits. Natural selection, as I often say, was really focused on getting your DNA into the next

generation, not necessarily on making you content and happy. As a consequence, we're very good at looking for food and mates and threats in the environment and not so good at remembering to floss. And these rude, brute facts about the human animal, I think, are a big part of why so many people who want to meditate do not actually meditate. In the nearly nine and a half years since my first book, 10% happier came out. I have seen incredible shifts in terms of the practice of meditation. It's no longer socially unacceptable to admit that you do it, for example. Now, I'm not saying, definitely not saying that my book is the practice of meditation. It's no longer socially unacceptable to admit they do it, for example.

Now, I'm not saying, definitely not saying that my book is the reason for this. I really think the science is the reason for this. But I will say that even as attitudes toward meditation have shifted, I think there are still so many obstacles, including finding the time, remembering to do it, and just the sheer difficulty of keeping it up. Okay. So that was a long wind up, but it brings me to my guests today who have come up with a one minute meditation practice that I'm pretty sure anybody or almost anybody can do. You can think of it as micro-dosing

meditation. I first heard about these guys from my friend and TPH fan favorite, Seven A. Salassi, who wrote me an email that said the following. This was after she read the book that was written by the two guests today. Here's her quote, I was kind of blown away by it. I think their work is going to revolutionize mindfulness. So my guests are Jake Eagle, who's a psychotherapist and mindfulness instructor and Dr. Michael Amster, a physician with a specialty in pain management, who's also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. Together, they're out with a reasonably new book called The Power of A, Overcome Burnout

and Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Fine Clarity and Purpose, in less than one minute a day. I roped my wife, Bianca, who has long struggled to boot up a meditation practice into being my co-interviewer for this episode, in which we discussed the following. How Jake and Michael stumbled upon this method, that's a story that involves pancakes. Why Bianca has trouble with meditation and why Jake actually says he is a terrible meditator. Why people who have trouble sitting daily

for extended periods of time might find that microdosing is easier. How to do their awe method, that's an acronym, AWE. The similarities and differences between awe and traditional mindfulness meditation, practical tips for trying out awe in your daily life. The early scientific evidence about the effectiveness of the awe method.

And finally, you'll hear whether Bianca and I were convinced. I should say this episode is part of a little summer series we're running called Monday in Glory. It's all about learning not to overlook the little things in your daily life that can be powerful and evidence-based, levers for increasing your happiness. If you missed the previous episodes on the power of art or beauty broadly defined, go check them out. Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice? Well in the words of highway billboards across America. If you're looking for a sign, this is it.

To help you get started, we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd. Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription. Dr. Michael Amster and Jake Eagle, welcome to the show. Thank you. We've been excited looking forward to this. Thank you down. We're thrilled to be here. And Dr. Bianca Harris, welcome to you. Thank you. Watch out, guys. Dr. Harris is a beast.

She will fuck you up with questions if you're not careful. We've heard that before. I hope everyone can appreciate this orgasm. Yeah, I'm never sarcastic. You know that, baby. So let me just start with you guys before we get sucked into the rabbit hole of our relationship. Can you tell us about your relationship, Michael and Jake, how do you know each other,

how did this partnership come to be? Yeah, so this is Michael. I am a pain management specialist out in California and I met Jake about 16 years ago after I went through a painful divorce, a friend of mine referred me to Jake to do some coaching. I was told about these incredible retreats that Jake and his wife Hannah lead through their organization called Live Conscious. They were truly life-changing experiences. I did individual work with Jake for a number of years and then over time our relationship transitioned into being colleagues.

We're both mindfulness teachers and we started our working relationship around the research on all about four years ago. When we started having conversations about how to discover a new way of teaching mindfulness to our clients and patients. We both have taught to hundreds of patients and clients, for me as a pain management specialist, I've led mindfulness pain programs for a number of years and also led a Buddhist Sangha. And we had some really great connection around wanting to find microdosing practices to help people develop a more sustained mindfulness practice.

What would you like to share about that, Jake? Well, what happened really wasn't quite as intentional. From my point of view, we sort of stumbled onto this. I was teaching a program online called Thrilled to be Alive. And Michael was curious about what I was doing. So he joined that as a participant. And during that program, it turned out that people were really reluctant to meditate. I asked everybody to meditate 10 minutes a day.

And about half the people said they couldn't do that. They didn't have time. It was too much of a burden. So I asked people to do micro meditations. And then Michael came up with the idea of calling it micro-dosing mindfulness. And when I conduct programs, I always do pre and post analysis of the participants. Where are they at from a psychological point of view, from mindfulness and a well-being point of view.

And what I noticed at the end of that course was that the people who did the microdosing were getting results that were equal or better to the people who were doing the 10 minutes of meditation a day. And both Michael and I were really shocked. We just kind of couldn't understand why they were getting such good results. So Michael flew out to Hawaii, spent a week with me and my wife Hannah, and the three of us really tried to understand what was going on. And that's when we realized what we were doing is we were helping people access the positive emotion of awe.

Because as we listened to what people said and we read what they wrote, they were very much describing the emotion of awe. So we realized we'd come up with a way to help people access awe, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that. But we really stumbled upon this. It was not something that we had thought about until we saw the result. I want to talk a lot about what you found and all that stuff. But let's just stay on this level of the difficulty many people have booting up a meditation habit. This is actually part of why I wanted Bianca here. You are married to like a meditation evangelical and you've struggled

with booting up a habit. Part of that is because I was so obnoxious about it early on But like can you just describe why this has been hard for you? I would love to blame it all on you And you're certainly partly to blame. I think for me it just has roots in probably the way I grew up and that I really wasn't exposed to consistency in patterns and habits and self-care, just because of a fairly chaotic background, which I've talked about before. And so both not having had models for it, although my dad later in life started to run marathons, perhaps I would have been more in that camp early on.

But between that and having some sort of rebellion against my husband. I think it has been a little bit hard for me to put self-care first. And unless the activity feels good in the moment, as I'm sure this is for most people, when you go to the gym, you don't always want to go or enjoy it when you're there. But afterwards, you're like, of course, that was amazing. Or at least that was worth it. But I have that same kind of hedonistic goal

of like I want to feel good right away. Otherwise, I probably won't do it. I mean, that's the problem with meditation. You know, if you go exercise, it may feel awful in the moment, but it does feel good afterwards. It's a little bit like that guy, you know, the joke about the guy who's banging his head up against the wall and somebody says, why are you doing that?

And he says, because it feels so good when I stop. And that is true with exercise. And neurochemically, we get indoor fins, but with meditation, especially at the start, there is no feedback like that. It just sucks, and then you stop. And it doesn't necessarily feel great because you stop. It takes, in my experience, and my informal surveying of people,

like takes a month of consistent practice before you start to get some intrinsic motivation to do it because it's not only somewhat enjoyable to do, but you're starting to see the benefits in the real world. Jacob, Michael, does anything we're saying here, Land With You? Land With Me, because I'm a terrible meditator. I've never liked it. My wife is a serious meditator. She was a student of Zen for many years, and it's very natural to her. But the longer I meditate, the more irritable I become. I think that's what the Buddha had in mind. She once had me go to a seven-day session, and at the end of it,

I just wanted to kill someone. I just couldn't stand it. We're not allowed to talk the entire week. My mind was going crazy. I felt like I was a complete failure. And I don't know that I've recovered yet. Yeah, I mean, as somebody who is a committed meditator and does, I'm literally about to leave on a 10-day silent meditation retreat soon. I wonder partly whether that might have been just the wrong form for you. Maybe

there is a meditation format that's looser. For example, I've gotten into looser style retreats where there's a little bit more talking. There's no schedule and the rebellion quotient has gone down like immeasurably. Yeah, I think that maybe like Bianca, I do not like that kind of regimented routine. I feel very restricted and my rebelliousness comes up when I'm told what I have to do and how long I have to do it. So I have meditated, but I've never gotten to the point where I enjoyed it. That's changed as a result of this practice in that somehow practicing our on method has made me more comfortable doing 10 minute meditations

and I can't tell you exactly why, but I'm much more relaxed now. I mean, on some level, that kind of computes for me because we know from the science of behavior change, first of all, that behavior change is diabolically difficult. And second, that for most people, the most successful strategy is to start small. And so that's what you've done with these micro dosing or intravenous mindfulness techniques

that you're pioneering here. And apparently that's led for you to more comfort with a 10-minute meditation. To me, that all kind of makes sense. Do you think I'm thinking about this correctly? I do. And I think it kind of taps into the 10% model, right? I basically did something very small. It made a little bit of a difference

and it opened a doorway for me. What about you, Michael? Are we talking about something that sort of lands for you in terms of this issue that so many people struggle with booting up a meditation habit? I have this suspicion that many people listen to this show or they enjoy the show on some level, but son, there's this ambient background static of guilt they feel because they're not doing

a lot of the things that we recommend you do. So it sounds to me like this is really a big part of your motivation. Yeah, definitely. As so many of you have taught mindfulness to people with chronic pain for many years, I've seen exactly what we're all talking about here is that people really struggle with developing

a sustained mindfulness practice. And when we go about it from a very formal, regimented method where we're asking people to sit for an extended period of time every day, they really seem to struggle. And then there's this whole, we call them Buddhism, you know, the second arrow. for an extended period of time every day, they really seem to struggle. And then there's this whole, we call them Buddhism, you know, the second arrow, but there's that effect where people then are beating themselves up because they feel like they failed out it.

And then it's even more of a self-defeating process and they really struggle. And that's what I really love about this practice. We had, and our studies, studies approximately 300 primary care patients and 200 doctors and nurses and the other study. Many people who had struggled themselves with mindfulness in the past and were able to really develop a comfortable self-supportive mindfulness practice, which one of the benefits of this practice is that there is a reward immediately. When we have a moment of awe, when we get to taste that deep sense of peace, relaxation, and presence, and focus on something that we value, appreciate, and find amazing, we feel good instantaneously. And anecdotally, people that have struggled with meditation because maybe they're neurodivergent with ADHD or

other really busy, racing minds, they're able to dogent with ADHD or other really busy racing minds, they're able to do this because we're just asking people to focus their attention for 10 to 15 seconds. Again, I want to go deep into the actual practice, but just staying on a higher level for a second. He said two things in there, Michael did. Bianca, that made me think of you.

One is the second arrow that I suspect you beat yourself up for not doing the meditation. And the other is neurodivergence. You've had some issues with, I don't know if you have a diagnosis with ADHD, but you've had some issues with attention that I think makes this even harder for you. Definitely, and I don't know which one is more powerful. My life probably equal, or at least depending

on the day. As far as the neurodivergence goes, you know, I had a brain tumor a long time ago, and there are some differences I have in how I read and how I learned that may or may not fall into the category of ADHD, but it's treated very much the same. But I think with a lot of people who have it and who are diagnosed late, you've already set up a system of self-flagulation for all the things that you don't do well or well enough. And so that is true, certainly about academics and about achievement-related tasks, which could include things that are healthy and good for you. And, you know, I happen to live with the sort of Michael Phelps of meditation at home. And it's very maybe not in your

world. It's so mean. Not true. But yeah, I sort of have anxiety that if I'm not going to do it well or really, really well, I mean, I just don't want to do it at all. And so I'm very quick to throw in a towel, which doesn't help me feel better, but it does make me feel like I can't fail if I'm not going to try even though that's the opposite of the definition. Right. So there's three things going on there. There's beating yourself up for not doing it.

There's neurodiversity and there's perfectionism. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And also, some rigidity in how one thinks about these practices and I've learned about meditation from you and you went through a phase that was extremely rigid. And what I have learned over the last two years, I would say in particular of just being more interested and open to learning about it and certainly exploring Buddhism a little bit with your friends and larger group. I realize that it comes in many different

forms and that in fact, there are little exercises that I do on the regular that kind of fall into these categories, you know, including something that you'll talk about regarding just an appreciation for a moment and really pausing and taking it in. That is something that I have done intermittently over the years, but would like, I think I could do that more regularly and derive benefits from it. But it's helpful to know that there are other ways and maybe you're already kind of doing them. Definitely. Okay, so let's talk about this process, this technique, this micro-dosing of mindfulness that you guys have come up with. As I understand it, you stumbled upon this through a moment involving pancake batter?

Yeah, exactly. I was out in Hawaii as Jake shared with his wife, Hannah. We spent the week exploring what this micro practice would be and how to build a model for this. And Hawaii, as you all know, is filled with a lot of extraordinary odds. It's got incredibly beautiful mountains and oceans, and the food is spectacular. But it was actually in this very ordinary moment when I was making breakfast for Jake and Hannah. I had poured some pancake batter and just stood there. Usually, when I make pancakes, I'm multitasking to do another things in the kitchen, but I just had this really profound moment of awe watching these pancakes go from a liquid to a solid

and you know matter of a minute and I felt that experience we have when we have a moment of awe where our body experiences you know the tingles and chills are the hair rises up in our arms and you feel alive and very present and the mind stands still and it was just making a pancake and the mind stands still. And it was just for making a pancake. And so from that, we had conversations about what was going on. And we created this three-step method, we call the A method.

And it's actually using the word A into a three-step process to help people develop a sustained practice of discovering moments of A on the ordinary, so that you don't need to go out to the Grand Canyon or listen to an incredible rock concert live to experience a moment of awe, but that we can experience these profound moments of awe

in the ordinary moments of our lives, in our homes and our places of work while we're in line at the grocery store, we can access awe everywhere we go. So walk us through. How do we do this practice? Well, we took the word, uh, turned it into an acronym. So the A stands for attention.

And the idea is that we're going to ask people to place their attention on something they value, appreciate, or find to be amazing in some way. It does not have to be an object. It can be an object. It also could be a memory. It could be a moment where you're hugging your partner. There are different ways of accessing awe. It just begins with something you value, appreciate, or find amazing. You place your attention there and then you wait. That's what the W stands for. And you wait, just very brief amount of time, but what happens when you wait is you go from 100% of attention to 110. You just amplify the amount of attention you're placing on whatever it is that you're focused on.

And then the E stands for exhale, and you have an exhalation that's a little bit longer than a normal exhalation. And when that happens, physiologically you're activating the vagus nerve, and we'll talk about that. But whatever sensations are in your body will be amplified. There's this expansion. And because we started by asking you to focus on something you value, the sensations in your body are naturally positive ones.

It's like putting some English on the ball when you're playing pool. We start with a little bit of English saying, let's go in the direction of something that we value. And so then when you experience the sensations, they're going to be delightful. And they may be mild or they may be significant. It depends on what the source of the awe is. But the practice is that simple. It takes anywhere from, I would say, 10 to 20 seconds.

It's typically one or two breath cycles. And we ask people to do it multiple times a day. That's one of the beauties of this. It's so quick that when we did the study, we had people do it three times a day. But we also saw something called a dose response, which is the more they did it, is it's so quick that when we did the study, we had people do it three times a day, but we also saw something called a dose response, which is the more they did it, the more benefit they derived. Let me just drill down on the basic blocking and tackling of the practice.

So AWE, I start with A, which remind me was attention. Attention, you're going to place your attention on something you value. Yes. Okay. So I'm looking at one of our cats, Ozzy Mandius, stretching out in a sunspot. Beautiful. So I'm placing my attention on him, unfurling his belly. So I've chosen what I'm going to attend to that I wait, meaning I just continue to gaze at this scene. And then after a few seconds, I exhale. This does not require a lengthy inhale to proceed it. It's just an exhale based on a natural. That's right. That's right.

It's funny that you picked the cat because that's actually what I do, except it involves putting my ear on the belly of one of our cats, who's a very loud purr. And it's both the sound and the sort of tactile nature of both his fur and feeling the vibration of the purr on my cheek that creates this moment of peace that I really, really appreciate. And I do that a lot, actually. Yeah, so you're bringing in different senses, right?

You're bringing in the kinesthetics, the auditoryory and the visual where Dan was starting with just the visual. I thought Dan was going to use you, not the cat. I knew he would not going to use me. So it's all good. Oh, man. This is already going. But I wasn't going to use him. So just to get on to terra firma for me here personally, in the A part, we've talked about using the senses could be visual.

That's where I stayed. Bianca talked about feeling the cat, the fur, and also hearing the internal workings. These are all sort of below the level of discursive thought. But is there a skillful addition of thought here? Like it might invoke awe to consider how many functions of this cat's body are happening in the moment. It's a network of networks playing out inside this little package.

And that can provoke awe too. But in meditation, we often vilify thinking, so I'm curious what you think of this question. Right, we give you much more latitudes. So, well, you're describing we would call conceptual awe. It's where you have an idea that just sort of blows your mind, you can't quite fathom it, you know, and so that's another way to access a state of awe. Absolutely valid, and we encourage people to do it. Some people have a propensity to access on that way. Other people access it through their senses, we call it sensorial awe. And then there's a third category, which is called interconnected. So sensorial would perhaps be gazing at the Grand Canyon or just the swaying of a tree in

your backyard. Conceptual awe would be thinking about how small we are compared to the apparently infinite universe and interconnected awe would be, wow, I love it when my wife makes fun of me in public. Yes, exactly, right. So, when we teach the program, we encourage people to have a 21-day practice initially to go in from that temporary state of experiencing this new moment of awe. It's very exciting and can be exhilarating to having this now become a trade about who we are, becomes part of our wiring as a person so that we're then out in the world and these moments of awe begin to happen spontaneously. So we think of this method as really training wheels helping people learn to begin seeing

the world in a new way to find these profound moments of awe in the ordinary. And then with time, they will just spontaneously rise and bubble up. Quite often starting with awe of the senses is a great way for people to begin the practice. We find that that's the easiest for a lot of people, because we can just use our vision or what we're hearing or feeling as a gateway into these moments of awe, and then expanding into more levels, including awe of interconnection with other beings, as well as the concepts that are filled with amazement all around us.

Coming up, Michael Amster and Jake Eagle talk about the differences and similarities between awe and traditional mindfulness meditation and some practical tips for trying awe in your daily life, given how hard habit formation can be. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music of Buddhist meditator, I'm wondering like how much mindfulness is in this really? Because one of the many benefits of mindfulness is a kind of meta-cognition. You learn by sitting and trying to focus on one thing, usually that's your breath, and then you get distracted a million times and you start again and again and again. And in this process of seeing how wild

the mind is, you learn not to be so owned by all of your neurotic impulses and ancient storylines. So as I often joke, you're planning a homicide, you're planning a glorious, exiled, filled speech. You're going to deliver to your boss over and over and over. You get carried away by the wildness and in anity and insanity of the ego. And hopefully what that develops for you is the ability when you're off the cushion and you notice a bolt of rage rising up

through your solar plexus into your cranium that you can see, oh, that's, I'm getting angry right now, but I don't need to inhabit this impulse. I don't actually need to become angry. I can allow it to arise and pass. I don't actually need to become angry. I can allow it to arise and pass away. And so I'm just curious. I'm not quite sure I'm hearing that benefit in what you're describing. I don't think we accomplish the same thing that you're describing,

Dan. I think that is distinct for the traditional mindfulness practices. What we're doing is different. We're doing a few things. We're creating a pattern interruption. If you feel that bolt of anger coming up, but you have a microdosing practice where you have access to all many times, in that moment, you know you have the ability to access all. So you can interrupt negative thoughts, you can interrupt negative emotions, you can give yourself a break. It's like

a respite from being on autopilot. And what I say is that unless a tiger is really chasing you, true fight flight, you can insert a moment of awe at any time, even if you're having an argument with your spouse, you can insert a moment of awe at any time, even if you're having an argument with your spouse, you can insert a moment of awe. Actually, what's better is to access a moment of awe before you have what might be a tense conversation. But I don't think it creates the same kind of metacognition that you are describing,

which is very typically associated with most mindfulness practices. Yeah, I would imagine the other skill it does not train is concentration, focus, the ability to stay on an object for longer and longer periods of time without getting distracted. Again, this is a classic meditation in the Buddha's school benefit

or a skill that you can develop over time. And again, this is not to denigrate the all technique at all. It's just, it's interesting to see that different, I mean, this is obvious on some level, but the different practices bear different fruit. Right. And this is also different in that it is so readily available. The benefits are different, and so are the applications.

In other words, I can do this in 20 seconds and I can shift my physiology, I can shift my mood very, very quickly and that's not true of most of the traditional mindfulness practices. One of the things I appreciate about this practice is that it's so portable and on the go. You know, like you Dan, I've been doing a very long-term Buddhist mindfulness practice for almost 30 years and a lot of 10-day retreats as well. And what I love about this is that I don't have to have the conditions of being in a quiet space,

on a retreat, or at my home to practice a deeper dive. I feel like I can really get a significant dose of mindfulness in just 10 to 15 seconds and repeatedly throughout the day and take this wherever I go. I can be at the airport, which for many people is a very stressful place. And I can find a lot of awe looking at people in the line at the TSA checkpoint or in all the architecture of airports and some of them are just so incredibly beautiful and awe-inspiring and all of the technology of being on a plane. Like all around there's this awe to be held and I love that this practice is so portable and doesn't require being on the mat so to speak.

And I've known you Michael since, well I you said 16 years, we've known each other. And during that time, I remember when you were a serious meditator, my observation of you then compared to after you started using the on method is you were much more serious. I don't think you accessed joy or humor as much as you do since starting this practice. To me, you seem much lighter. Yeah, I would agree with that. There was a lot of seriousness in traditional practice, and I was part of a tier teacher training program at Spirit Rock, and a lot of focus on suffering in traditional practice.

And I know there's value. There is a lot of value in a traditional deep dive of practice. But I, what I love about the microdose is of mindfulness is that this is a practice that is so easily accessible for everyone. For example, I use this in my patient care room. When I start a visit with a patient, we spend about 10 to 15 seconds having a moment of awe together. Whether it's looking at a piece of art on the wall or looking out the window, we share our awe moments. And it's a beautiful way to become very present to connect with other people because awe is contagious. When we

share our awe with other people, we inspire on them. You know, when I heard earlier, Bianca sharing about the cat, you know, I could reflect back about petting my dog and the awe that I have being in her presence. And so I love how even conversations of awe can inspire off for each of us. How would you define awe? It seems so intuitive, but I'm wondering what your definition of awe would be, because I've thought about it a lot in reflecting on difficult times, especially in training and medicine. And, you know, when you share all these horrible stories, someone might be like, well, that sounds terrible, were you miserable? And I would think, no, but I wasn't. I had some of the happiest times as well. But then happy didn't really quite cut it.

And I realized what it was was my off for medicine and the human body and all these wonderful mesmerizing incredible nuggets that really carried me through all of it. And especially during times where I could have easily bailed. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I love what you're sharing also, you know, being a medicine.

And I do find a lot of awe in those challenging times with patients, those deep intimate times when you are connecting with someone over a difficult diagnosis or prognosis that can all be wonderful sources of awe awe even in the challenging times. So you asked about how we define awe and in our book, the definition we use is an emotional experience in which we sense being in the presence of something that transcends our normal perception of the world. So what that means for me practically is that when I open my eyes to see things that I'm valuating appreciate and are finding an amazing. I start to see the world in a new way where I experience a lot of vastness and connection. And it also changes the way that I perceive things

and react to things. And it really shifts my normal perception of the world. So when we think of, you know, these extraordinary moments of awe, let's say we're at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or maybe we're witnessing, you know, the birth of our child, or attending to the death of a patient at the hospital, these are these profound moments where we can experience a sense of that vastness of that connection. And in those moments, it also gives us a taste of a shift of reality. It gives us a sense of a deeper connection, a sense of presence that's marketed from our usual automatic pilot of being in the world. Do you want to add anything to that, Jake?

I wanted to go back to something that Dan mentioned when he was talking about traditional mindfulness. And one of the things observed, both in you, Michael, and also when I was part of a Buddhist community for a few years, there's a sort of paradox of the serious meditators taking themselves and their practices seriously. And I always felt it amusing because it seemed contradictory with the teachings. And what I notice in our method, the on method, is there's an opposite tendency where I can't take myself too seriously. I am just so aware of the vastness

of everything around me. And I feel less significant, but not in a negative way. I just don't take myself as seriously. And I find some great relief in that as someone who, by the way, tends to be very serious. Well, I take what you're saying very well. I mean, I had Bianca referenced before I went through a period of time that I can still slide back into it of taking myself in the practice way too seriously and being super, super committed. And I kind of think about this as an intermediate problem.

In other words, if you go on a ski slope, you got the beginners, the intermediate, and then the experts, black diamonds. My experience interviewing hundreds of meditation teachers on this show and interacting with them in real life, the common denominator, and I've said this before publicly, so I'm apologizing now for being repetitive, but the common denominator among the greats is that they do not take themselves seriously. And this whole self-seriousness, I think, happens in the middle, or even at the end of the beginning when you're going to go hard at this thing, and you just don't have a sense of humor about it yet.

Anyway, that's just a long way of saying, I completely agree with what you're saying, and I've been on the wrong side of this joke personally. I fear that this discussion has been great. I fear I've committed a little malpractice in terms of being the interviewer here, because I'd like to say more about the practicalities of this practice.

You have some examples in your book, including some of some practices that have names like home as a museum, sliding into slumber. Where are you connecting with strangers? I'd love to sort of walk through some practical examples here so that people really can take this out into the world after having heard this. I don't know what malpractice you committed, but I've really enjoyed the interview so far. Maybe I haven't done enough awe today because I'm being self-cruel. I think so. So in the book, we teach people the basic method, which is really quite simple, and then at the last section of the book, actually, my wife wrote these, practices, some of them are just moments of awe that are just sort of instantaneous experiences of awe that only last 10 seconds. But she also took people on a journey where she said, you can have extended moments of awe.

So for example, taking a shower can become an extended moment of awe as you really pay attention to the feeling of the water on your body and maybe different parts of your body and maybe their temperature changes. And she has this beautiful capacity to be very aware of her senses. And for Hannah, this is very natural. For me, I needed a process to do that because I'm kind of in my head all the time. And so the awe method gave me a sequence, something to pay attention to, that would allow me to get more in touch with my senses. And that's what the practices in the last part of the book are helping people do.

Can we walk through them? Let's start with home as a museum. The idea there is to walk through your home and look for objects that may evoke an experience of awe. It could be a photograph, it could be a gift, something somebody gave you. It could be a piece of furniture, and you remember an experience you had of playing with your dog while you were on that piece of furniture. It can be all sorts of things.

It was Hannah's birthday recently, and I gave her a chess set, and the pieces are made in Greece and they are a particular period, a particular style of art that she and I both love. And so that's sitting in our home and when I look at it, it evokes memories of when we got married, which was in Greece, which is where we learned to play chess. And all of that is contained in this object that's sitting on the table. And I can walk past it three times and not notice it,

where I can stop for 15 seconds, really pay attention, wait for a moment, have that longer than normal exhalation and have a sense of just how it happened, is this release of energy in my spine. I feel my neck release when I do that. And it's that simple. So I'm walking through the house.

I see Bianca's stepfather is an incredible artist, shout out, Werner Fyfer, and we have a lot of his work around the house. I might stop, pay attention to the beauty of Werner's work, wait as his creativity seeps in, exhale. It's a 22nd pause in the middle of my day, but it's doing for me all of the things that you're describing. Right. It's resetting your nervous system. It's altering your physiology. Most likely it's shifting your state of consciousness. You are probably walking through the house with some

intention to get somewhere to do something, but you take 20 seconds to be remarkably present. And there's not a lot of thinking involved in this. When you actually enter into the positive emotion of awe, there's a sense of timelessness and words go away. And one of the mistakes that people often make is, A, they try too hard, and B, they then try to put their experience into words. And when you do that, you're reducing the experience. You're making it smaller.

So it's just to allow yourself to have this experience that's very kinesthetic and emptying or quieting of the mind and just let that be what it was. Don't try to dissect it. Do you try too hard when you do this at home, Bianca? I was just thinking about the fact that, no, it doesn't come from trying. And I've been doing this a lot with our son recently who is growing up way too fast. And I just find myself looking how the contour of his face is changing.

And his smell, everything is changing. And I've been very cognizant recently of just seeing it and taking an actual moment to kind of literally breathe it in and just acknowledge it. I'm mourning a little bit at the same time, but I suppose that's therapeutic, but yeah, he's taken over the cats for me. Well, this is a really great, how old is your son? He is eight and a half.

So, this is a great example because I think you mentioned morning a little bit, right? And this is one of the really unique things about awe is that you can experience awe while morning. You can experience awe while being anxious. You can experience awe while being unhappy. And that's a very unusual thing. Most emotions are singular in nature and you go from one to the next. But awe can be a complement that you experience while having other emotions. And it's almost like a, in a way, I think it's a meta-emotion. It's on top of the other emotions.

And changes the nature of them. I love that so much. And it speaks to having some headaches and neurological issues. And the thing that keeps me from imploding is wondering what process is going on beneath. And I have off for that. Yes. Yeah. It really just crystallizes for me now how it really can coexist. And it's distinct from happiness.

You don't need awe necessarily to be happy. But you can also be unhappy for lack of a better term and in awe. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty amazing. When Jake and I came about this practice, my daughter was in her last year of high school at home, and I have a single parent and pretty much raised her

on my own. And so it was a really intense time for me of a lot of mourning. So I understand what that's like as you watch your child go through their maturation and become eventually young adults and independent individuals out there in the world. And so the all method was really powerful that last year because as Jake alluded to, when we have these moments of awe,

we experience time expanding. And research has shown, not our research, but other people's research on awe, is that our frames per second of what we observe goes at a faster clip in terms of the amount of data being taken in, so our perception of time expands when we have moments of awe. And it was such a powerful way for me

to really savor and enjoy that last year with her at home together. And I would go to different events of hers. And I would just be in awe the whole time. And I would just feel like some of these experiences, like a waterpull game of hers, that would, they're very fast pace games. But I would experience a game that would last for 30 minutes, more like an hour and a half to two hours.

Because when you're in awe, you experience time dilating. I got to really enjoy that last year with a much deeper sense of presence and awareness and heart-centeredness, because when we are in awe, it's a proso, what's called a proso social emotion. So it cultivates within us a sense of connection, of love, of kindness, compassion. A is really just this master of motion that has so many positive benefits that filter out through it.

There's another aspect to that, Michael, because if I'm having a hard time, I will access awe, and it doesn't make the difficult time feel like it lasts longer. I simply lose track of time. And so I think of it mostly for me as a timelessness. And so you're talking about an experience where it felt like time stretched out. What I often experience is time just drops away. I lose track of time completely. Are there other awe practices that we should talk about or run through for the listener? I listed a bunch earlier, we don't have to hit all of them, but just to give you a chance to put as much practical meat on the bone here as possible. Well, the one thing I would say is that it helps to have defined periods

where you do the practice. So for me, I wake up in the morning, take care of things, brush my teeth, wash my face, but I always then go outside and have a moment of awe as a way to start my day. I always have a moment of awe in the middle of the day, usually when I take a lunch break, and I always do a moment of awe before I go to bed at night, I go outside and look at the stars if they're visible, and I have a moment of awe. Those are kind of the bare minimum in terms of at least three times a day. We encourage people to do it more than that. But I think setting up some specific times when you'll practice is very helpful. Are there other things, Michael, that you think are helpful for people in terms of developing a practice?

Yeah, I completely agree with you, Jake, and what you're sharing. I would just encourage people to find some habit that you already do on a daily basis and then to match that with a moment of awe. So for me, I begin my day with making a cup of coffee. Many of us begin our days with a cup of tea or juice or something. And so, Many of us begin our days with a cup of tea or juice or something. And so I find a moment of on the process of making coffee, whether it's opening the bag and smelling the beans, and taking that deep inhale of the aroma, or watching the water boil in a kettle. I enjoy using a French press so I can see the granules floating in the water and then pushing down

and I can have a moment of all of that. So whatever things we're already doing, we can really pair them with moments of awe. Perhaps you take your pet on a daily walk or taking your kids to school and giving them a hug when you say goodbye. That could be a moment of awe. One of my favorite extended practices in our book that we talk about is about giving a hug with the intention of awe attached to it. And in our lifetimes, we'll give many thousands of hugs to people. And most of the time we do it, we're just doing it automatically without being fully present and aware of what's happening.

And a hug when it's matched with an experience of awe is what we call an orgasm. It's such a heightened experience of kinesthetically and emotionally when you really get to feel that juiciness of being fully present and bring a near full self to hug. Little less messy than the other versions. I'll pay for that later. Bianca, let me turn to you because they share some pretty good ideas for getting this habit into your life. But I'd be curious candidly, honestly, right before we sat down, you were saying, I kind of do this anyway, but you said it's remembering to do it. That's the hard part.

So how motivated do you feel to do this now and don't worry about hurting their feelings because they're unzoom and they can't hurt you anyway? And do you think you could up your cadence of this practice that you were already kind of informally doing? I'm definitely motivated. And I also wouldn't say that I formalized a technique as they're describing. I think that's extremely helpful the way you do it. And I tend to do it when I need to break some cycle of something unpleasant, whether it's a feeling or a thought. And so I motivated

Dan's looking at me and assuming that maybe the thoughts are about him and maybe they sometimes are. But I think that scheduling them regularly through the day as opposed to just waiting for a moment of need makes a lot of sense. I'm not gonna answer it. Totally. I mean, I just think about this a lot because habit formation is so hard. And that's true if you're talking about meditation

or sleep hygiene or exercise or intuitive eating whatever, all the stuff we talk about in the show. I have some guilt because you're just piling more things on people's to-do lists, self-compassion, whatever it is. It is hard to change your patterns and routines. And one of the hardest parts is what you articulated earlier, how to remember to do this. And one of my little sticks that I'm, oh, I always go off on here is that one of the first translations of the word that we now call mindfulness, sati is the original word in poly. One of the first translations is remembering or recollecting. And that is just so hard to do because we're programmed for, you know, rushing and

ticking things off of our to-do list and worrying and ruminating and all of this other stuff. And so we can have millions of guests on this show as we do talk about life-changing, potentially life-changing practices. It's just like, how do you remember to do it? Well, I think for me, the fact that it feels good, I mean, plain and simple, and that I really, I am awed by awe. Like, I find it fascinating and really aspirational to just find it everywhere because it does exist. I talk about issues with exercise regimens.

Well, there are two very distinct exercises that I love and I don't hesitate to do them when I'm healthy enough to do them and that's so cycle and Pilates. And I do not like exercising otherwise. So you find something that you love, even if that doesn't mean you have the energy to do it every day, but I wouldn't miss a class if I'd been signed up for one. So I think maybe I'll try setting an alarm

three times a day and see how it changes. You're looking at me very skeptical. I'm just laughing because I'm thinking about how our exercise tastes start like the busiest possible. So let's go out to bodies. Like, well, we thought about that too. But we should move on to croquet and lawn garter. We are very lucky.

But I mean, the best exercise you can do is the one that you like and that works for you. Absolutely. You know, I'm just messing with you. Anyway, so I feel like this is that for me. As I'm listening to both of you, I was just making some notes, I created this little three R's model.

And what I was thinking is that because this has such a brief practice, it takes 10 seconds, we encounter no resistance. And with many things where we're trying to form a good habit, there's this natural resistance, either it takes time or effort. And what we're doing essentially takes no time and barely takes any effort. The second R is what Bianca was talking about, which is there's an immediate reward.

I do it. I feel better. And then the third one is remembering. And this is what Michael mentioned earlier. After you do this for some period of time, there's a myth that you can form a new habit in 21 days. I don't personally believe that, but we'll just use it as a working metaphor. At some point in time, after you do this three times a day for a week or two or three or four, at some point, all moments arise spontaneously, and so I don't need to remember.

And so Michael originally came up with this idea that he could practice moments of all while at a red light. He was going to make the most of his time if he's at a red light, he's going to practice a moment of awe. And then not long ago, he told me that now when he's at a red light, it just happens. It's not like he has to say, oh yes, I want to have a moment of awe. It just happens. It's not like yes to say, oh yes, I want to have a moment of awe. It's just become what he would call a trait. It's just how he responds to being at a red light. And so I think that we have gone fairly far

in overcoming some of the obstacles that are required to develop a habit. How long it takes to do that? I don't know. I think it varies for people. Coming up, Michael and Jake talk about what the science says about the benefits of their awe method and whether or not Bianca and I were convinced to give the method a try ourselves. Well, so let's talk about the science. I'm very interested. Let me start with a bit of a skeptical question, a good, naturally skeptical question. The book is called The Power of Awe, and then the subtitle is Overcome Burnout and Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Fine Clarity and Purpose,

in less than a minute per day. And I read that I was like, really? So walk me through these claims. I'll let Michael take the lead on this. I'll just want to say that we were both embarrassed by the title. I've had that experience with publishers so often I've made the joke. And this is true. That on my first book, 10% happier. They honestly tried to bargain me up to 20 or 30% happier. They also sent us a mock-up. Bianca remembers me going through the roof, notwithstanding my meditation habit of a book titled Be Happy Now. That's what they wanted my book to be called.

So I get it. Publishers are well-intentioned, but sometimes misguided. Yes. Yeah. So Jake and I were definitely feeling a bit uncomfortable with the title the way it initially came out, but well, let's talk about the science and share with you what we found in our studies and see what you maybe think might be a good title that we maybe might want to do for the next edition of the book. Well, the power of awe, I have no problem with that. So I mean, I don't think you need a new title, maybe a new subtitle.

The subtitle, exactly. Yeah, so we partnered up with Dacker Keltner at the Greater Good Science Center. And he's really thought of us the granddaddy of awe research. He wrote the first paper back in 2003 with Jonathan Hate that started to explore the science of awe and studying it as unique emotion. Prior to our research, most of the research on awe is looking at extraordinary awe. So they had participants in these studies go in a virtual reality experience, experience themselves like an astronaut and having the overview effect to have a moment of awe

and then studying how that had impact on their psychology or their sociology of the participants. So what's unique about our research is that we taught people this 21-day-all method. We enrolled about 300 primary care patients and 200 healthcare professionals at the height of the pandemic. We first connected with Dacker Keltner in February of 2020, right before the pandemic started and shared with him some of

our initial data. Then the pandemic hit, we reached out to Dacker again and said, hey, we'd love to do a study with your lab and teach this to patients as well to healthcare practitioners who are really struggling at the height of the pandemic. So we launched our study in June of 2020 really at the height of the pandemic and we taught via Zoom the 21-day all-method program.

We did pre-imposed measures as well as daily diaries that the study participants completed. And looking at the big picture in terms of our data collection, we looked at depression, anxiety, loneliness, burnout, stress and well-being, and people's ability to cultivate a mindfulness practice. The most impressive of our data outcomes was we saw a 36% reduction in depression in the general population population and this held true

as well for the healthcare professionals with a 35% reduction in depression symptoms, which is equal to what we see in traditional therapies for depression, cognitive behavioral therapy, or taking medications such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors, our results seem to match up to that with a pretty effective methodology. And we think of this aah dosing like a medical intervention. It's a tool that we can teach our patients, something that I use in my clinical practice, you know, of teaching people how to use aah to help with chronic pain, as well as anxiety and depression. And one difference, Michael, is no side effects, and it's free.

Right, exactly. There's no patent on this, and it's freely available to everyone. As you just open your eyes, there's really ought to be had everywhere. Even if you live in a big city like New York, there's ought to be had just looking outside at the pavement. We can be in all of,

seeing weeds grow through the cracks in the ground. We can be in all of, seeing weeds grow through the cracks in the ground. It can be an all moment. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about some of the data and what we found. Looking at anxiety, we saw a 21% reduction in anxiety pretty much across both groups. And we saw a decrease in loneliness as well. We compared our data to a different study

that was done through a health system on the East Coast, and where they had taught doctors mindfulness practice of heartfulness, six minutes a day, over four weeks, which was the same duration of our study. And they saw about a 7% improvement in those physicians with their experience of loneliness. And we saw a 15% reduction in loneliness with a very similar study design, but with teaching the all method instead. We saw decreases in burnout with the healthcare professionals, improvements in ability to manage stress and well-being,

and also decreases in other chronic health symptoms like chronic pain, headaches, and chronic gastrointestinal distress as well. So that kind of pretty much sums up our outcome data from our studies. In reading some excerpts of your book, there was a lot of talk about some terms that I couldn't personally define like cytokines

and inflammation and there's some mention of safety, which I found compelling. Could you hold forth on all of the above? Yeah, sure. When I think about cytokines, I'm actually really in awe of what they are and their history. So, you know, the earth is 4 billion years old and we've had single cellular organisms that started on this planet a little bit over a billion years ago. And when these first organisms came onto the planet, the way they would communicate with each other

were through cytokines. So this cytokine system is really as old as life on Earth. And so the cytokines are basically in two different camps. There's the cytokines that tell us that we're safe. And these are the cytokines that will tell different cellular processes in our bodies to build health new tissue, to support our immune system, to build up muscle mass. And then there's

the cytokines that are what we're called threat cytokines. And they're saying there's a problem, there's an infection, there's an injury. And it sends out all the different communications to the different cells in our immune system to get on guard and to go after and fight an infection. What's really interesting and research not done by us, but by our colleagues at UC Berkeley, and this is in a 2015 paper in the Journal of Emotion, they looked at different positive emotions

and their impact on our health, specifically on the secretion of these inflammatory cytokines. The most significant, I guess, the boss of the crew here is what's called intra-lucan-6, which is implicated in a lot of different chronic health conditions like heart disease. They had people experiencing different positive emotions, and what was found in terms of the data collection and drawing serum levels of people's blood

looking at these different emotions with the inflammatory cytokines was that always the only positive emotion that statistically lowered people's levels of intralucin six these inflammatory cytokine processes in the body. It's part of what you're saying here that we feel safer when we're regularly getting awe and that that can have an anti-inflammatory impact?

Well, you know, we don't know in terms of our particular methodology if the awe method directly lowers inflammation in inflammatory cytokines because that technique wasn't being studied in that 2015 study, but because we are teaching people how to access these moments of on the ordinary and to ask them to repeatedly microdose them throughout the day. And from our evidence that we know that these moments of awe, lower experiences of depression, anxiety, which are neuroinflammatory conditions, and more and more we're understanding with mental illness, that they are neuroinflammatory conditions and more and more we're understanding with mental illness that they are neuroinflammatory conditions as well as we saw a decrease in chronic pain levels that this may be one of the mechanisms that produced the results that we saw in our research

studies. In the study that was done in 2015, the primary point that I took away was we think of positive emotions as having a beneficial effect physiologically and psychologically. But what stood out was that awe was unique in its ability to decrease inflammation. Other positive emotions were not providing the same result. And this is very interesting because as a therapist for years, when I'm working with people who are dealing with some kind of disease, whether it's psychological or physical, I'm thinking about how can I help this person relax? How can I induce happiness? How can I have them experience more joy? But I never thought how can I help this individual experience more awe? That wasn't even on my consciousness. And now, although

I'm semi-retired, when I do work, it's very much in the forefront of my mind. And when I work with people, I will induce a state of awe, which always shifts their perspective on whatever issue or problem they're having. That doesn't matter what the content is. Somebody will come to see me, they'll talk about an issue. I'll ask them to take a moment to experience awe, then we'll go back and revisit the issue and their perspective has shifted. And in the research this is referred to as cognitive accommodation. What that means is that I have a new way of understanding something that I have thought about previously, but I now see it in a new light.

And so I'm expanding my understanding or my perspective. And I find this to be a really valuable tool in assisting people and not only individuals, but also couples. I've done a lot of couples counseling, and couples have a conflict. They'll have some tension. I'll ask them to take a moment to experience awe, and it may not be related to one another,

but individually take a moment. We're gonna take 30 seconds. I'm gonna teach you how to experience awe. Now we're gonna go back and talk about whatever the issue was. And both people are in a different state. The way I think of it is they're in a different state of consciousness. They have more resources available to them.

So it's very powerful and not really spoken about in the world of psychology or not very much. We're almost out of time here. Bianca, do you have any closing thoughts or questions? I'm really excited by this method you have, and I'm going to use it. Will you use it, Dan? Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah. I'm definitely intrigued. You've referred to it as the future of mindfulness, the sort of microdosing. I might quibble a little bit with the term, because I'm not sure how much technically speaking mindfulness is in here, but I definitely could see it as like for people who are struggling to boot up a meditation habit, which might include mindfulness meditation. This is something you can do instead or as a precursor. It's just a way to start training the mind given the fact that the more formal practices can seem daunting. Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. And neither Michael or I came up with that, the idea that this is the future of mindfulness came from Dacker. I don't think Michael or I would have been comfortable making that claim. And the reason that Dacker made it is because he sees us in a world that's just people are going so fast,

so overwhelmed, so busy, that they're not taking the time to have a mindfulness practice. And to the degree that this overlaps with mindfulness, and I would say it overlaps, because it takes so little time, he was suggesting that this may be what allows people to practice while living in such a busy and demanding world. And I agree with that. I mean, I make it a practice never to disagree with Dacker. His name has come up a bunch just to say Dacker's been on the show a couple of times. I consider him a friend. He's been very influential in my thinking on many things. And we will put links to his prior appearances on

the show because they will be great pairings to talk like a Somalia with this interview for sure. Gentlemen, before I let you go, any final thoughts you wanna put out there? We've talked a lot today about a personal practice with awe, but really we think that this practice is something that goes well beyond the personal and can be really thought of the practice that can be a positive impact in the world.

And that if enough people are practicing these moments of awe, that they really spill out, that they have an effect of being contagious with those that are around us. If we think about the world around us and a lot of the challenges that we're facing right now, you know, how can you be in awe of different cultures and of different people around the planet and harm them or wanna kill them? How can you be in awe of the natural world and harm and destroy it? How can we be in awe of life itself

and that there's wonders and miracles all around us on a daily basis? And you know, and not see that. When we're in awe, it changes the nature of every conversation from the personal to the conversations of a community to that larger of the nation in the world. And so, we really see a bigger call to action with this practice. It's not just an individual practice, but one that we see can really positively transform the world if enough people were to practice and to find awe in their ordinary moments of their lives. It could potentially be one of the,

not the solution, but one way to help to make the world a much safer and better place for everybody. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the personal is political in that way or the I sometimes joke. There's a geopolitical case to be made for you to get your shit together because you can be a note of sanity and an unsafe and insane world often. So thank you both for your work. Thank you very much for coming on this show and thank you Bianca for being my wife and fact checking me and

making fun of me in real time. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm glad you joined us Bianca. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to meet both of you. A nice job down. I appreciate the way you connect. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to meet both of you. A nice job down. I appreciate the way you connect. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Thanks again to Michael Amster and Jake Eagle.

Of course, thank you to Bianca for classing the whole joint up. Thanks as well to you for listening. Go give us a rating and a review. I know every podcast host asks for that. But there's a reason because it really helps us with the algorithm. So please do me a solid. And thanks finally and most importantly to everybody who works so hard on the show. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy, Lauren Smith and

Tara Anderson, DJ Kashmir as our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman, is our senior editor and Kimi Regler is our executive producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio, and we get our theme music from Nick Thorburn of the great Indie Rock band, Islands. Nick's got a new album coming out, I just noticed on iTunes, so you can actually hear at least one of the songs now if you go check out Islands, wherever you get your music. We'll see you right back here on Wednesday for a brand new episode. Hey, hey prime members.

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